Global Exchange volunteer Ryan Van Lenning writes from day 1 of the caravan that departed Jalisco state from El Salto on Nov 28 (late posting due to limited internet access). Caravan participants learned of the poisonous state of the Rio Santiago, polluted by decades of toxic, industrial dumping and about the struggle to resist the El Zapotillo dam.
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On the ground in Cancun, Jeff Conant, writes for Global Exchange and is collaborating media outreach with the Global Justice Ecology Project and the Indigenous Environmental Network during COP 16. He writes, “Between the armored vehicles patrolling the outside and the labyrinthine and exhausting process to get anywhere near the inside, a clear attempt has been made to marginalize civil society, if not to neutralize it altogether.”
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Shannon Biggs, Global Exchange’s Director of the Community Rights Program, is credentialed as a NGO observer to the UNFCCC. She writes, “There’s something unsettling about the juxtaposition of negotiating the fate of the climate in the middle of the tequila-shooting, beach-clad dancing frenzy that is Cancun.”
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The first leg(s) of the Via Campesina caravans are over – the three delegations arrived from Guadalajara, San Luis Potosi and Acapulco. Two thousand, five hundred join the International March For Life and Social and Environmental Justice and march through Mexico City.
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On the road to COP 16, La Via Campesina caravan delegation member Irene Florez reports:
Traveling with the Via Campesina caravan from Guadalajara to Cancun, our delegation is now picking up about 20 additional climate activists at every stop. Converging through rallies, marches, and civil disobedience actions, the Via Campesina caravan members are meeting with allies in various towns and cities and alerting local populations about the Cancun summit, picking additional passengers up along the way.
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The Via Campesina caravan left from Acapulco today – international and Mexican activists and independent media journalists heard from communities in Guerrero – disputing their forcible expulsion from their homes and fighting a mega dam project called La Parota.
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I’m just about to meet my international and Mexican traveling companions for the next week and board the Via Campesina caravan from Acapulco, Mexico. First stop on this journey today will be to the much disputed potential site of the mega hydro-electric dam called La Parota and meet with community members and the organization Consejo de Ejidos y Comunidades Opositores a la Prensa La Parota (CECOP).
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Climate activist from around the globe have been planning activities on and around December 7 to unite as a community for climate justice and to denounce false solutions to climate change. Get involved by participating where ever you are!
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